SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Unhinged Post #47:

I have a lot of empathy for everyone on this site. And honestly, despite being divorced, I still feel a lot of empathy for my ex-wife.

You are not only a better person than I am, but you are a better person than I WOULD EVER EVEN WANT TO BE. How do you have empathy for everyone here? How far does the empathy go?

I think no one should get stoned as they were in the Old Testament and I also think no one is eternally damned, but that's about as far as it goes for me. I certainly have empathy but it doesn't spread around well to everyone.

My one goal on here is to stop betrayed men from FOOLING THEMSELVES.

[This message edited by WontBeFooledAgai at 9:54 PM, Sunday, July 5th]

Why do you think my posts trigger you so much?

Your posts betray lack of self-awareness. I just edited out a list of other problems I see in your posts, but the triggers come from your lack of self-awarenedd in areas like setting up straw men and drawing firm conclusions on the basis of projection, and insufficient knowledge.

Been there, done that, chenged, and become happier and much more effective in life. It's so easy, and so useful, and you don't see it, so I trigger.

Note: my logic was always pretty good. I did less projection than most people, shich was part of my pathology. I also have always been pretty good at avoiding drawing conclusions on too little data, also part of my pathology.

But I was pretty high on the lack-of-self-awareness scale. Even though I'm probably low-average on that scale now, I really do not like to see it. BTW, my career success, such as it was, came because I perceived things that people missed.

*****

My repeated recommendation that sharing one's own experience with infidelity helps most is based on ideas like:

TLDR - lots of personal experience seeing how people change when the share themselves and don't change when they stay at the level of theory, lots of reading, understanding the futility of speculating on the internal processing of people one knows, much less of people one doesn't know. I can expand on these claims, but I can't verify any claims, so I won't bother anyone with additional paragraphs.

If you want to heal from the impact of infidelity on yourself, you've got personal issues. Sharing is necessary to heal a personal issue. Theory is a way of distancing oneself from the issue. Observation tells me that. So does logic.

*****

SI is anonymous - really. We've had members threaten suicide, and we have no way to get help to those few people. Given the anonymity, it's a great place to take down your defenses and share your self. My bet is that you'll be pleasantly surprised if you do.

*****

Often the 'need' external validation isn't understood or even recognized. IMO, the need for EV is closely connected to a person who senses a 'hole' in their sense of self and come to believe EV - another person - can fill that hole.

I have to agree that the payoffs in an affair are probably multiple for all WSEs.

But I also know that at least one A (my W's) almost definitely would not happened without that need for external validation, without the 'hole' she felt in herself, and without the hope that someone else could fill that hole.

Since the EV was the sine qua non of the A, and since the other payoffs of the A were not enough to draw my W into an A for 44+ years, I don't have any problem seeing the desire for EV as the single - pure - cause of her A.

If she's not alone - and a lot of WSes and BSes write of the hole they feel inside, I don't think she is - it's an intellectual and logical error to discount the need for EV as THE cause of many As.

But the reason the WS cheated is largely irrelevant to the BS's healing. The BS's task is to heal from the wound of being betrayed, irrespective of the WS's reason for cheating or the nature of the A.

Speculating on the mind of the WS takes energy away from healing, just as any other speculating does.

*****

My post-d-day calculus was:

If I R'ed - that is, if R worked the way I wanted it to - I'd build a great M with someone I loved and who was there for me for 45 years. I'd be able to give and receive physical love for a long time, and I'd spend my last years with someone who knew and loved the real me.

If I D'ed, I'd move in a place that I wanted to live since college, have sex with young women to my heart's content, some very skilled (though the skills would come at a cost), come back in 6 months - 5 years and maybe find someone I could love as much as I loved my W and who loved me as much as she did. But I might not. I might have to spend the rest of my life without giving or receiving love, especially physical love.

Those were my primary valuse, which I share here because different values could lead to a different outcome, at least at the emotional level.

Both outcomes were very attractive, but R seemed like the better choice. My gut told me R was a sure thing, but only part of my being believed that. Most of my being made us ahow it would work with consistent actions over a long period.

*****

** member to member **

@wbfa,

You seem to be saying that you're proud and happy to write off WWs and male BSes who choose R. Further, you seem to say you have a double-standard, and a misogynistic one, too. On what basis do you think WWs any worse than WHs? How is a male BS any worse than a female BS or a male BS who chooses to D?

If I''m misreading your post, pleas clarify. TUA.

[This message edited by SI Staff at 7:38 PM, Sunday, July 5th]

Well but in fact in another thread, when I mentioned that most WWs snicker at their BHs, one poster said "it literally sounds delusional". This is someone who posts a lot on here. So I actually don't believe this.

I said this not because it never happens but because in some of your posts I have witnessed you accuse a bs’s ws of doing something there had been no context or history of. I don’t know if you read into things or mix up posters in those scenarios but I made the wrong assumption in this case. I thought you were just saying it because you like to ignite anger in the bs as you find that to be a stronger position.

And you are right anger is a higher vibration emotion to sadness. But circumventing sadness and other layers of grief while defaulting to anger also keeps a bs stuck.

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Sooler,

I think at its base when we talk about validation versus hedonism the part that gets tricky when we are talking about a wayward wife specifically:

Women still are given a slant when it comes to sexual hedonism. We have words for women who like sex and who have a lot of partners versus no such worlds for men. This skews things greatly. It’s assumed women would minimized the sex or claim to be looking for other things to avoid the added shame we put on females.

While men who are promiscuous, who engage in revenge affairs to validate themselves as manly men who can still conquer is encouraged along people who believe in the same vein.

I think pogre got to the heart of it when he said "does it really matter if it’s sex or validation?" And I think it doesn’t. I think it comes down to in a patriarchal society some men truly still see females who truly embrace their sexuality to be dangerous. They may be harder to satisfy. They may not desire you. These are things boys grow up razzing each other about and that kind of programming leaves their own scars. Not all men look at things this way or view it this way but I would say in some cases not succumbing to that is an element of reconciliation in which it was the man who was betrayed. They are more apt to block out the noise and say "what do I really want?"

Women experience this insecurity when their husbands cheat as well. We simply have been given different societal programming. If a man cheats she must be frigid or not keeping up with his desires. Women are in a society where porn largely dictates what’s sexy. And it isn’t sexy., it’s a distorted lens.

All of these things are of course just societal programming and mostly just rubbish but if you look at debates like these they extend from those concepts. You can have far more enlightened conversations is you are familiar with and disregard some of the programming surrounding this. More men good for divorce when cheated on than do women. I think there are many factors but a big one is that gender programming and underlying misogyny that is as toxic to a male as it is to their relationships.

Now of course, no one is saying a male cheating is less than a female or vice versa, all I am saying is societal attitudes about the genders involved come into the lens a lot in these conversations.

Why is it so much worse that a woman experienced sexual pleasure in an affair? So much worse that you feel they are likely to lie about it more than a man would? I don’t need answers to this, I am saying evaluate that for yourself. "She must be lying, she wanted more sex and orgasms" okay but what makes her lie? Is it because women have been programmed to be very careful about the male ego when it comes to sex? I mean, maybe?

I am making some very exaggerated points here but the reality is men and women both enjoy sex. Some of those people (non gender related) enjoy it more because of who it’s with. Some enjoy it more if it’s more exciting and pushes boundaries. I just think it’s suspect when men who cheat really do not get any of this treatment if they must be lying.

There is a misogynistic root to some of this that just never seems to be acknowledged because we have grown used to viewpoints held in a patriarchal society that are not helpful to men or women. Women do not get called cucks for example. Men do not get called whores. Recognized the root of some of the debate and ask yourself if it’s really logical or just as powered by feelings as everything else.

—-

And for those who dismiss affairs are like alcoholism or herion. I can see why one would say that, after all there is no outside substances involved. But when you look at gambling addictions, porn addictions, shopping addictions, they are every bit as destructive and the drug in all these cases is the chemicals produced by the brain in excess, creating the high.

In all cases of addiction decisions were made up front before the addiction existed. It doesn’t excuse anything but it does explain heightened behaviors that help the ws deal with cognitive dissonance.

It’s not that any ws or bs on this site thinks cheating is okay, but once one has been able to recognize that maybe in drugs one wouldn’t steal from their grandma it gets easier to understand.

So in cases where someone snickered or bragged about their behavior—-this is simply cognitive dissonance getting validation from others that what you are doing is acceptable or understandable: personally, I would have died if anyone knew what I was doing, keeping it as secret as possible was my personal way to deal with the justifications and dissonance. I didn’t have to self evaluate if I didn’t look at it too hard or talk about it.

But we are talking about things done under the influence of many psychological factors, not permanent opinions of our behavior or our spouses.

It doesn’t make it right, excusable, forgivable or any of those things. It’s simply a discussion of what possibly made things tick in those moments.

[This message edited by hikingout at 3:49 PM, Monday, July 6th]